


Green Wires

by Shiggityshwa



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Cameron as an unreliable narrator, Developing Relationship, F/M, Gen, Major character death - Freeform, Not A Happy Ending, POV Cameron Mitchell, PTSD, Physical Trauma, Psychological Trauma, Tragedy, Unreliable Narrator, therapy sessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-07-23 22:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20015842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiggityshwa/pseuds/Shiggityshwa
Summary: "Hey, Mitchell! When the time comes ... cut the green one.""What the hell did that mean?""I don't know. I have a feeling some day you're going to find out."





	1. Red. Yellow. Green.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick note in case you skipped over the additional tags: Cameron is an unreliable narrator. This means that due to multiple reasons (trauma, shock, etc) that his memories are compromised. Therefore there will be a lot of continuity errors that are present on purpose.

“How are you feeling today, Cameron?”

These sessions always start the same, with him grunting through the door, his thigh and hip a little worse for wear because he’s been forgetting to keep up on his meds—he doesn’t know why, but he just can’t seem remember them anymore—then the Doc flips on the light behind two heavy drapes meant to simulate the sunlight just a few floors up and out—only none of them have been cleared to take PTO outside the mountain yet.

Not until the IOA knows exactly what happened.

The Doc deals in pleasantries, asks if he wants classical music playing in the background, asks if the temperature is okay, asks if he’d like a water or a coffee and he’s started bringing his own drink to cut down on the small talk because for someone who has nothing but time, it’s still a waste of his. Eventually he’ll ask that they get to the point and the Doc will ask how he’s doing, say his name the same way his momma does, which is weird because the Doc is a guy, and he thinks it’s a ploy to get him to open up more.

Wonders if anyone else opened up.

They all have separate therapists because you can’t double dip the chip. All of them have to be individuals in this, each needs to have their own version of the story, and their own schedule for healing. It’s been recommended that they stay away from each other until the case is closed—or at the very least don’t talk about what happened—which is shitty because there’s one less of them to talk so the topics are limited.

“I’m okay,” yawns throwing his arm over the back of the couch, a plush red thing with a button punched into he middle of the seats. He aligns his bad thigh with them so the push of pain keeps him awake, keeps him motivated.

“Any trouble sleeping?”

“No more than usual.” A week ago, when this all started. When the members of his team that came back ended up in the infirmary—not all wounds physical—all just shocked—all just—

“My offer is still open if you’d like me to prescribe a sleeping aid.”

“You saying I’m not looking good, Doc?” Chuckles, but it comes off more of him clearing his throat from the layer of coffee.

“I’m saying that you look like a man who has a lot to say, but very little want to do so.” The therapist, Dr. Hu, rarely looks up from his pad of paper, the sound of the pen scratching worried him at first, but now when there’s no scribbling, his concern grows because he’s not saying the right things.

“Well.” He scratches at the back of his head, hair oily and sticking together, and adjusts, then readjusts, on the couch. “There were four of us, three of us came back—I just—how many times do you want me to go through this?”

Hu arches an eyebrow over the thin frame of his glasses and settles straight against the back of the chair. “That’s for you to decide.”

“Ohh,”chuckles again, but it sounds more like a scoff than he meant it to. “Don’t get all cryptic on me, Doc.”

“In all honesty, Cameron—” God, he should’ve let him keep calling him Colonel Mitchell “—you’re the one being cryptic.”

“I’ve given you the answers you asked for—”

“Yes, exactly that—just answers.” Hu rests his pad against the tops of his legs—this is gonna be bad. “You’ve recounted everything as logically, as mechanically as possible with the expected stoicism of a military colonel. What I’m waiting for is the emotion.”

He leans forward, his elbows balancing on his knees. “Then you’re gonna be waiting a long time, Doc.”

“Fine.” Hu’s lips twitch to the side and he grabs the pad of yellow paper again, it looks like it’s stained by coffee. “If you won’t tell me about how you’re feeling, perhaps we could talk about one of your team—”

“No.”

Hu doesn’t seem startled by his bluntness—shouldn’t be after a week of it—instead shuffles the pad to a single hand, while reaching for a handleless cup of green tea. He sips it once, twice, and sets it back onto the edge of his desk. “Cameron, I am a therapist specializing in combat trauma and PTSD—”

He glosses over the many diplomas on the wall, all with golden stamps and swirling signatures, and tries not to sink his front teeth into the Styrofoam coffee cup from the caf. “So you’ve mentioned several times.”

“Then please know I’m not only equipped to help you deal with your pain, but that I’ve dealt with it before—dozens of times. Hundreds.”

Neither of them says a thing for a solid minute, he can hear the ticking of the clock over Hu’s desk, the soft ambient music of ringing metal and chimes playing barely noticeable under all their pretenses.

The Doc sips from the cup again and shifts as he waits patiently for an answer.

He knows he’s going to have to speak out about what happened eventually, but the pain is too fresh, hasn’t even scabbed over, and removing the team from him—from each other—isn’t letting the wound heal, forcing him to speak about it to a stranger isn’t letting it heal. This isn’t the way he dealt with loosing his legs before he got them back, wasn’t the way he dealt with a bunch of things—being optimistic was, being a good leader, a good friend was, having a good sense of humor was.

But he’s not a good leader, because not all the team made it back, and it was directly on him. Couldn’t pass the blame if he wanted to. Hot potato blew up all over his face.

“How about for today you tell me where you and your teammates were situated when it happened. Nothing more than location and function.” Hu’s fingers curl around the pen again, ready to start scratching down details for the IOA, times and coordinates so that fingers can be pointed at him with precision. He doesn’t care about that. The empty spot at the debriefing table, on the _Odyssey_ ride home, in the caf, is what’s hanging heavy around his neck. “After that we can end the session. I think it would be a worthy first step.”

Washes a hand over his face, grease sliding against grease and he really should have a shower, but it seems pointless after what happened. Same with eating, with sleeping, with trying to get through paperwork. People keep offering their sympathy, Lam keeps offering antidepressants and charting his answers to strings of questions growing weirder and weirder when he stops in once a day for his evaluation—Landry is keeping an eye on them all like a momma hawk, wings spread and draped over them.

“I was in the control room.” Words feel like vomit out of his mouth, because he’s there—he’s still there staring down a wall of televisions—security footage—and fiddling with things he shouldn’t have been. He’s not Sam, he’s not—

“Good.” Hu nods, smudging his smile, trying not to be encouraging, not to be patronizing. “What were you doing?”

“I was trying to bust them out.”

“Good.” The Doc’s hand flies over the pad of paper writing out in chicken scratch how he fucked up so royally. “What about the others.”

“Teal’c—Teal’c was standing guard at the door.” The Big Guy almost blocked the entrance to the cellblock control room while he mumbled swears down at wires. So many different wires and he tried to remember what they said earlier, before— “He had a zat.”

When he stops talking, the doctor stops writing and they both stare at each other expectedly, him waiting to be let go, to get out of here early because he’s not ready to relive the moment that he relives every time he goes to sleep.

Hu senses his discomfort, or is watching his fingers twitch, his leg bounce, his body fidget thinking of them on the black and white security footage. How beat up they both were. How he was only seconds away from saving them, from having his team back from an assignment they never should have been on, one that was his whim because he thought he could be helpful, could be strong, could be humorous.

Only meant to sacrifice their time.

Only meant to sacrifice—

“You just have to tell me where they were and what they were doing, Cameron.”

Hu’s voice rings strong through the thick memories, through the tears burning in the corner of his eyes, through his fingers digging holes into the Styrofoam cup as he nods, his mouth pressing against his balled fist. “They were prisoners.”

“Were they in separate rooms?”

“Yes.” God yes. It’s one of the only saving factors of what happened. Of what he did. Of how he killed—

“What were they doing?”

“They were—they were both restrained.” Cuffs she couldn’t get out of, and he made the joke to Teal’c that they ought to grab a pair for when she gets too handsy on missions—as a solution for her five finger discounts.

“How were their demeanors?”

“They just got tortured for three days, how do you think they—”

Hu raises his hand to halt his brewing rant. “I apologize, please allow me to rephrase the question: Were they interacting with you through comms?”

“Yeah.” Both of them talking over him as he stood with pliers trying to pick from a dozen colors which wire to snip. They sifted through the colors he called out, stating whether it could be harmful to cut or not. “He was more alert, he was on his knees in his cell. She was on her side—” it looked like she’d fallen over and just didn’t have the strength to get back up, head hanging to the side, hair covering her face. They all spoke with her, tried to keep her alert, through her mumbled answers “—she faded in and out.”

After the process of elimination, he had three wires left, and was getting mixed reviews from them.

Red.

Yellow.

Green.

Jackson said to cut the red, that it would disable the door and let them both out of their cells but couldn’t give him a straight answer if there was a fail-safe in place or not.

Vala, sounding drunk, slurring her words, stumbling through consciousness promised him it was the yellow wire, that she had worked for and with the Lucien Alliance on several occasions and had done something with a guard—something he didn’t want to know—to gain the knowledge.

Despite the torture, the pain, they still fought over comms with each other, trying to raise their voices to win, Jackson groaning and Vala’s voice eventually just becoming single words huffed out.

“That’s good enough for today.” Hu flips his notepad closed and sets it on the side of his desk beside his green tea, standing and gesturing to the door. “I’ll ask one simple question tomorrow and we can begin to unpack what happened.”

“What if—”

The red and the yellow.

Both went untouched.

“What if I don’t want to?”

Hu glances down at him, and he can feel the burning grow, cheeks greasy and clammy, sore and waterlogged. Like having frostbite in the middle of June. “Cameron, are you sure you won’t accept any prescriptions? Dr. Lam said you refused the—”

He didn’t cut the red or the yellow.

Two team members, both more experienced than him, both having more knowledge on different ships, different plans and schematics, and he didn’t listen to either of them.

“—you really should consider them, depriving yourself of sleep from guilt or stress isn’t going to help you.”

“I’m fine, Doc.” Blinks back what’s left of the tears, what’s left of the black and white monitors and three colored wires in his mind, the pliers in his hand, his heart beating out of control and then stopping as one of the cells evacuated. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He didn’t listen to either of them, because he met himself—a bunch of times actually—and before his doppelganger—his brother from another dimension—left, he told him one thing.

To cut the green wire.

So he did.


	2. A Small White Kettle

“How are you feeling today, Cameron?”

“Oh, you know—” he shrugs, swirling around his black coffee inside the same Styrofoam container as the one he had yesterday, the same one as last week, and the week before. They’re on week three of this bullshit, of this talking without revealing anything, of this interrogation hidden under questions about his childhood and parents and why he wanted to be a pilot “—same old, same old.”

“You said you’d planned to get up earlier this morning to go for a jog—did you manage to do that?” Asks him like he’s three years old and the task of tying his own shows is monumental. It’s patronizing in a covert way, like he doesn’t know how he’s being stupid, but Hu does.

“Yeah, I still jog every morning.”

And every night.

And sometimes through the day on breaks.

Or at lunch time.

He’s never been confined to the mountain for this long, without being allowed to go home or being sent off world. Two and a half weeks. Eighteen days and the gray scenery is all starting to look the same.

“Dr. Lam informed me that you failed to meet her earlier today for your scheduled checkup—” Hu lets the question hang, cupping his hands together in his lap, the yellow paper pad not even opened yet.

“I didn’t realize you were keeping such close tabs on me, Doc.” He sets his coffee down on the table beside the couch, directly in the middle of the coaster, and shifts his legs so the cushion button hits him right in the sensitive nerve in his thigh. Can never sleep. Lays awake in bed, tossing and turning for hours before giving up and going for a run.

The only place he wants to sleep is here.

“I’m just curious as to what had you so preoccupied that you’d miss your appointment?”

“I was taking a nap.”

He wasn’t.

“That _is_ encouraging, I know you’d been having sleeping troubles.”

“Yeah, well, I guess the morning run tired me out a bit.” Reaches for his coffee, and lets his arm drop, blinking back the sleepless stinging in his eyes. “Can we get started?”

Hu doesn’t acknowledge his question, flicking on a switch to a small white electric kettle that starts to purr softly. “I’d like to see if you’re able to talk about what happened directly afterwards.”

He stays silent, lips bunching, despite whining for the session to start, he hates answering things about that day, about what happened and how he felt. The wound is starting to heal, the absence of one person still blatantly obvious and weighing down on them, but not so much that they can’t have a meal a day, or a morning and afternoon marathon, or a shower every few days.

“We got on the cargo ship and headed back to the Odyssey.”

Alarms were screeching, the hallways of the base falling into patterned darkness as Teal’c directed him through and to the hanger.

“Why didn’t you use the rings to evacuate?” There’s barely any pen movement, simple drifting lines that make it seem more like Hu is drawing a police sketch of him then taking notes about his supposed shattered psyche.

“Base went into lockdown mode.”

“Then how did you exit the hangar?”

“Vala fiddled with the electronic panel, put it on a delayed opening.”

He set her on the ground, one hand placed between her shoulders and the other ripping open the panel. She still had on those cuffs—the ones he made that joke about—the ones made of heavy and jagged metal that domed her hands and tore away at the skin on her arms.

“We have no time to try and get those gloves off of you right now, so—Vala!” Shook her slightly, both his hands consuming her shoulders as her head went slack, and her chin bounced to her chest. “Princess, you gotta focus here. Tell me which crystals to mix.”

Which wires to pull, like she didn’t just do that five minutes ago, like he didn’t just ignore her.

Perked up at the last second, eyebrows raising, but her eyes barely opened, as she gestured with a nod of her chin. “Switch the pink and white crystals,” her voice almost used up, hidden somewhere in the back of her throat, “and pull the black wire.” Her eyes turned upwards, one of them bruised over and swollen shut, the other red rimmed and rolling, trying to focus on his face. “Where’s Daniel?”

He slammed the box shut, before heaving her back into his arms. She asked again and again for Daniel, voice smaller and smaller until it was used up and her head fell slack against his shoulder.

“Who was the first to reach Ms. Mal Doran?” The kettle whistles, steam bellowing beside the Doc, looking like pipes burst from zat blasts, from P-90 return fire.

“I was.”

She wasn’t conscious at that point. Didn’t get to see from her window what he’d done. She lay on her side, arms awkwardly twisted behind her back, blood was dried on her face from a cut under her black eye. He scrambled into the room, half of his brain screaming what he’d just done, a mantra, while the other half told him to get her while he still had a chance.

Slid his hands beneath her and she flinched awake, wrenching her body away from him like a trout caught and tossed onto the pier.

“Easy.” He told her, sitting her up slow, watching the stars spin behind her eyes from lightheadedness, from blunt force trauma, as he examined the cuffs, unable to find keyhole in the mess, let alone another way to get them off her.

Was about to ask her if she could walk when her eyes—well her good eye—finally met his, and all her muscles relaxed as she grinned.

Said one word.

A single word.

“Mitchell.”

Before she slipped unconscious again.

He carried her out, all army superhero, and he thinks the metal cuffs weighed almost as much as her. Tried not to let the cuffs dangle to much, but by the angle, he’s sure her shoulder dislocated.

“What happened once you boarded the cargo ship?” Hu sips his green tea, finger clawing the top of the handleless mug, tipping it back against his lips

“Teal’c took main controls, I sat with Vala, tried to see if there was anything that I could use to get the cuffs off her.”

“Were you able to?”

“No.”

He flipped her on her side, the one she hadn’t slumped to in her cell, and stared at the bulkhead of the ship, all the metal panels drilled into place. The top of her head touching his bad thigh and he found solace in her even breathing.

“Did you talk about anything?”

“No.” He smiles wistfully and doesn’t know why, remembering the warmth of her near him. She slept, Teal’c piloted the ship, and he stared at the wall, sobbing.

Hu’s pen is scrolling now, a mile a minute like the needle on a polygraph machine. “What happened when you reached the _Odyssey_?”

“Medical was waiting for us. They took Vala away on a stretcher.”

Swarmed around him like ants, relieved his arms of her. She hadn’t been awake in a while, not since before leaving the base—he didn’t know how long that was, because the wall didn’t change in the cargo ship, the panels didn’t shift, but sometimes in bouts—when he got stuck in what he’d done—he’d shift and the hand supporting him against the seat would drift before her face so he could feel the short, hot breaths escaping her mouth.

“And Teal’c?”

“Teal’c went to a different room because Big Guy took a near miss on our way out—I didn’t notice.” Must have been when they were readying the ship, when he was puppetting her, being the hands and arms and legs she didn’t have access too, crossing crystals, pulling wires, tucking a loose strand of hair from her clammy skin. “I felt—feel—bad because I didn’t notice.”

“Have you seen either of them since?” Hu’s tea is empty as he stashes it on the side of the desk, just before the little white kettle.

“I see Teal’c sometimes.” His coffee is cold when he brings the cup to his mouth, the taste absorbing the odd flavor of Styrofoam, the top layered with a white skin. Doesn’t stop him from sipping in order to have a reason not to talk too much. “Run into him in the workout room, sparred a bit. The staff wound is healing up nicely, probably won’t even leave a scar”

“Do you talk about what happened?”

Chuckles, leaning into the back of the sofa, his thigh stiffer than ever, and he can’t really remember the last time he took his pain meds for it. “Well that would be a breach of contract, wouldn’t it, Doc?”

“And Vala?”

“She breaching contract?”

“Have you seen her since disembarking from the Odyssey?”

“Once in the med bay when she was still under. I heard she got clearance to go back to her room, but I haven’t seen her yet.”

That’s just a big fucking lie, and Hu probably knows by the way he’s wagging the end of his pen between his fingers because he tipped off the polygraph.

Saw her a few hours ago sitting in the shadows of Daniel’s lab because the environmentally friendly lighting had left her in the dark because she’s not as nimble as she used to be. The swelling in her eye has gone down substantially, more discolored than forced shut. The stitches from her cut removed leaving behind a strike of white skin curving under her eye. The only real indication of her time in Lucian Alliance captivity are her arms, one still torn up in red slits, and the other nestled against her chest in a sling because he did dislocate her shoulder.

Approached her, sat beside her without any sign of her discomfort, of her emotion, and for more than a minute they just sat, didn’t say a single word, didn’t make any eye contact, just stared directly across the room at the chart Jackson created on his dry erase board before they left for what was supposed to be a diplomatic mission on a small, peaceful planet. Her breathes weren’t as short as they were on the cargo ship, cracked ribs healed on strict bed rest allowed for heavier breathing.

They just breathed together and for the millionth time since he cut that wire, he wondered what the fuck was happening.

Finally, their breathes synched up, sounded like a ticking clock, one he thought Jackson would have in his lab since he was always a stickler for schedules, for dates, for meeting him on time in the briefing room and getting upset when he showed up late because he stopped for a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“Vala—”

Glanced at her then, her bottom lip stuck between her teeth, her hair done up with clips, but sloppy because her dominant arm is tied up. She was the epitome of trying, of stitching something broken together and trying to pass it off as repaired. Fighting to keep her exterior flawless, while he remembered how she went off the deep end after Daniel disappeared with the Ori.

She shook her head at him, lip turning white under the pressure of her own teeth, tear caught dangling in her splayed bottom lashes, and she shuddered in a breath—one that hurt from her wince, from her shift to the side—and shook her head once, lopsided pig tails wagging lowly. “I don’t know, Mitchell.”

The light turned off and they stayed in the dark, breathing, feeling, not speaking, staring at the backlit board where Daniel wrote a reminder to set his alarm for the morning mission.

She left first.

Wobbled off the stool as the light blinked back on, toppled from the seat and onto her feet with the least amount of grace he’s ever seen from her. Wanted to reach for her, help her steady her, but his body—his arms were so heavy and his thigh aching from the placement of the seat edge. So he just listened as she walked out of the room, her gait slow and confused, the lights glowing after her.

“I see.” Hu scratches his pen over the pad and circles something several times before flipping the cover back closed. “Unfortunately, our time is up for today.”

Wants to say how unfortunate it is, that he has to come here everyday—even weekends—and try to tell a complete stranger the way he massacred one of his teammates—one of his friends—without getting emotional, without letting his guard down, without giving away too much.

It was an accident—unintentional—but the more he talks about it, the more he questions little details, things he missed—what happened to Vala’s cuffs, Teal’c’s injury—the more he starts to lose faith in himself, starts to doubt his own memories, his own actions.

But he has to be patient.

“All right.” Tosses his half full cup of coffee into the trash by the door, massaging his leg muscle under the guise of wiping off his hands. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Doc.”

He told himself to cut the green for a reason.


	3. A Full Yellow Pad of Paper

“How are you feeling today, Cameron?”

“Oh, you know,” sighs and stares longingly at his coffee parked on the side table. The one he can’t even think about without his lips and jaw throbbing. “I’ve been better.”

“Yes.” Dr. Hu doesn’t check an eyebrow at him, but with the tone of his voice—again, eerily similar to his momma’s—he might as well be, words all condescending in length with just a hint of a sigh, like Hu expected him to get a better grade in organic chemistry—like his momma did—but knows he missed two weeks because of mono.

Hu knows that too.

Because there is basically no fucking part of his life that he hasn’t recounted.

Has spoken about the plane crash, the pain of becoming mobile again, of standing flat on his feet and wanting to scream because the steel rod they shoved in him hurt so bad. Spoke of how he felt when he met everyone on SG-1 for the first time, of how he looks forward to Thanksgiving in Auburn but hates it because his brother has a great wife and two great kids and all he has is a metal rod that goes off when he goes through airport security.

Hu knows all this because it’s been a little over three weeks now and by not shutting up during these sessions, they’ve allowed him small benefits—like not having to check in with Lam every single day. He’s also able to go for jogs outside now instead of firing up one of the treadmills and running until he’s worn the groove away on the machine, the tread ending up looking like a skunk.

Hu knows all this.

Everything.

Almost everything.

Because he’s still hush about that day.

It’s starting to become far enough removed from his mind that his memory is allowing bits to fade away. What he and Teal’c talked about on their way to the Lucien Alliance facility, the song he hummed to Vala while she lay unconscious beside him, but he still remembers the exact order he cut the wires in.

“Would you care to explain?” The Doc hunches over a small sink at the end of wall cabinets, refilling the kettle. When he doesn’t offer an answer, Hu gives him a half-lidded expression over his shoulder.

“Explain what?”

The kettle settles on it’s base, and Hu flips it on with a switch, immediately the soft grumbling of boiling water bubbles into the room over the nature soundtrack of the day, light rain on metal, barely audible, almost ambient, almost real if they weren’t storeys under a mountain.

“What happened in the cafeteria a few hours ago.”

“Oh.” Yeah, that would probably be a good subject to talk about today. Part of him considers that he might have started the rumble on purpose just to have a conversation topic that didn’t revolve around him directly indirectly killing a teammate. “That.”

“Yes.” Hu hunches, retrieving his little white ceramic cup from a cupboard. “That.”

“Teal’c and I met in the caf for lunch—neither of us were really up for our spar session—”

Hu sweeps away the seat of his big wingback chair, and flips through a file drawer until retrieving the yellow pad that is just full of all his psychological fuck ups. “And why was that?”

“I don’t know if you noticed,” voice terse at being interrupted too quickly, is that even ethical for therapists to do? “But moral’s been down a bit.”

“Fair enough.” Hu lets him have the win in order to concentrate on the bigger picture. “Who started the fight?”

“Well,” groans as he shifts his bruised body against the harder-than-normal couch cushions. “That depends on partiality, I think.”

“Allow me to simplify: who threw the first punch, you or Teal’c?”

“Surprisingly, Teal’c,” almost chuckles at it because after working with the Big Guy for five years, he’s only seen him react in physical violence from rage or distress twice—well three times now. “It was granted though, I was running my mouth off.”

“You said something he didn’t want to hear?”

The kettle reaches it’s crescendo, its whistle slicing through their conversation, boils with such force it almost rattles on the base. The hot air. The anger pent up in all three of them because they need someone to blame and they can’t agree who because they’re not allowed to talk. The way he didn’t even see Teal’c’s fist in time to dodge it, and the solid burst of pain from the force behind his punch split his lip immediately, spilling his blood on the floor.

A betting man would have expected one hit to be enough, sent him back staggering, but it wasn’t. Two then three, his sneakers slipped in his own blood and he crashed against the table bench. His vision blurred, but knew Teal’c still loomed above him, his fingers scrambled at the plastic seating, but slipped, again in his blood.

“I said something about Jackson. Something that I probably shouldn’t have.”

The pen is already scribbling away, Hu give him a glance from over his thin rimmed glasses. “What did you say?”

“Honestly? I don’t remember.” He doesn’t. Not the exact words—that his memory working on his side again, fading away things that make him feel embarrassed or ashamed or panicked. All he knows is the subtext of his words—that Jackson inadvertently sabotaged the mission. “I think I was blaming him.”

“For what?”

“For getting snatched up on that nice little hole of a planet.” His tongue darts out, tapping against the tear in his bottom lip for the fourth time since the session started. He keeps forgetting about the stitches because of course he needed stitches, getting punched by Teal’c was like getting hit in the face with a frying pan. “They didn’t have much technology, but they had tons of corn and sometimes all you need is a good bonfire and some fresh corn.”

The leafy smell of concentrated green tea filters into the air, and with the rain soundtrack almost seems like there’s wet pavement just outside the office door. “Then how did he manage to get himself and Vala abducted?”

“He got a tip from a villager that there were ruins at the bottom of the hill, about a fifteen-minute hike down. Jackson wanted to go check it out, I said to wait until morning. Jackson pressed, I said, ‘no’ and then Vala got into it, siding with Jackson, whining about never getting to explore—”

It still makes him angry, to be underminded by a guy who has been through the gate more than him and has more experience off-world than he does, but no military experience, no training in exploring new locations, scouting out where’s safe and where potential hazards could come from. It’s what his old man did for a living, it’s ingrained in his blood from being a farmer, from being a soldier—always keep his eye on the flock. Always know where the danger lays, and after midnight on a planet they’d only been on once with people they’d only known for a few hours, leaving the safety of the group seemed like a big fucking danger.

“But once Vala starts in there’s usually no end to it unless you give her what she wants, or unless she falls asleep. I couldn’t deal with both of them complaining so I let them go.”

“Then it’s your fault, isn’t it?” Hu’s not wearing the cheeky grin he senses. It’s one of the Doc’s goals, trying to catch him in a trap, web him up in his own words because he’s become too loose lipped.

“Partially my fault, yeah.” Leans in on his elbow, trying to seem relaxed, unphased, but remembers too late about the bruise blossoming on his jaw and winces. “My fault for letting them go, Jackson’s fault for not letting it go.”

“And what about, Vala?”

“What about her?”

“Do you blame her?”

“No. Why would I?”

“She begged to go to the ruins along with Dr. Jackson, it seems she’s just as complicit in being abducted.”

“No, she’s not.”

Hu hums a sound of interest that falls in with the soft rain and if he hadn’t been here so often, he might have missed it. “Why is that?”

“Because all Vala wants is approval—usually Jackson’s approval—but any approval is usually good enough.”

“Would you care to extrapolate on that?”

“Vala didn’t whine because she wanted to go to the ruins to investigate, or to learn something, or to explore, or even to try to steal whatever she could get her hands on.”

“She did it to back up Dr. Jackson.”

“No,” he chuckles this time, wagging a finger at the impatient doctor and shifting his weight to his other hip. “She wants it to seem like that to him, wants him to think he’s got her all wrapped up when really it’s the other way around.”

“All right.” The cuts of pen across paper sound like a skipping album, strokes so deep and heavy and fast. “Then why do you think she protested?”

“She did it for attention.” Tosses his hands to the side because he knows his team, he’s been working with her just as long as Teal’c and he can tell when she gets anxious or antsy, when she needs help and won’t ask for it, when she asks for help and doesn’t need it, when she presses something important, and when she’s doing it for a little spotlight glow.

Knows when she’s telling him the absolute truth, mumbling barely cognitive with her face turned into the ground and blood crusted into her eyelashes, that cutting the yellow wire can save them all.

“If you knew the motives behind Vala’s actions, then I still don’t understand why she isn’t responsible.”

“Because I could’ve given her something else to do. I could’ve asked her to survey the area and find any people she thinks might be suspicious, I could have sent her in to mesh with the village women and come back with information the men wouldn’t give up, I could have just told her to hold tight for a second, but I didn’t. That’s on me.”

“So because of your and Dr. Jackson’s actions, she was tortured for three days by—”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Saw her when he got there, and it felt just like Teal’c punching him in the face. Stomped down the shock, the worry, the rage while his inept fingers tapped on the comm, talking to them, watching as Jackson angled his head up towards the camera to carry a conversation and how she barely moved, how she barely made sense when usually she’s talking circles around him.

“I think that this is going to be a relevant area of discussion for us, Cameron. There’s very little that you refuse to talk about—”

“Yeah, so maybe that’s a good indication to listen when I say we’re not talking about what happened to her in there.” Ends his sentence by staring directly at Hu, glare unwavering.

“But you’re willing to continue speaking about Vala in general?”

“Of course, she’s my teammate, she was there.”

“Okay, then perhaps now you’d be willing to tell me who initiated the fight in the cafeteria.” Hu checks and eyebrow at him now, lips pulled back tight as he sips at the cup nestled in his hand.

Shrugs because they’ve never backtracked to a previous line of questioning in a session before. “I told you. I started the fight with words. Teal’c threw the first punch.”

“Yes, but that was in the altercation between you and Teal’c.” Hu sets down his cup of tea and plucks his pen from between the seat cushion, tapping it only twice against the yellow pad. “I want to know who started the altercation in the whole cafeteria.”

Exhales harshly through his nose, the warm burst of air smacking against his stitched lip, and he pushes his hands together to keep from rubbing one over his face. “Vala did.”

Hu hums again, eating up his words, writing a small novel about how he just threw her under the bus. “I see.”

“She broke up the fight between Teal’c and me—it wasn’t so much of a fight as him using me as a punching bag—but she stepped right between us and told him off.”

He was about to half gloat, sort of show that humour that’s so good at getting him through these tough IOA-interrogating-teammate-dying therapy sessions, but she turned and went off on him next.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” She jabbed a finger at his shoulder and when he grunted on impact, she rolled her eyes and reached down, hauling him back up to stand, dusted off his shoulder and helped him straighten out the wrinkles in his shirt despite the blood gushing from his nose. “You’re our leader and you make yourself scarce after Daniel’s death like it’s not affecting anyone but you, like I’m sleeping fine, like I’m still eating.”

“Vala—”

“No!” Her voice boomed, didn’t shriek or screech, but silenced anything he was going to say, was pointing at him again with her nondominant hand, the other still slung up. “Grow up, Mitchell.”

Thought she was going to walk away and never talk to him again. Thought she was going to leave Teal’c to continue to beat the shit out of him so he would learn a lesson. Thought she was going to get her sling off that day because he was going to help her exercise her arm because he knows what it’s like to not be able to use a limb or two for months on end.

Never thought someone would groan in the cafeteria about how Dr. Jackson wasn’t even in the military and how his death didn’t matter because he was probably going to end up coming back. 

She had one hand, her bad hand, and she grabbed the metal tray from the table so quick, that by the time anyone in that room understood what she was doing, she had already smashed it into that guy’s face and tossed down the blood splattered tray onto the ground. The swiftness of it didn’t bother him, he’s seen her reaction time, he’s sparred with her and knows that she banks on her unpredictability to get the upper hand on her opponent. What he didn’t expect was the sheer violence of it, the bashing equal to her voice cutting down his, the sound of metal impacting was almost sickening.

Clicks his tongue and hisses a bit at the pain he should expect at this point. “Someone said some things about Jackson and Vala reacted.”

“I heard her outburst was very forceful.”

He turns away, listening to the pitter-patter of fake rain on fake tin, trying to chase the clary smell of green tea.

After a beat with no answer from him, Hu clarifies, “so you approve of her use of violence?”

“Well, maybe us air force guys just need to watch the way we speak of the dead.” He checks the watch he started wearing again because like Jackson’s lab, there is no clock in this room, just the watch on Hu’s wrist and he’s not ready to just let him elongate these sessions without his consent. “Our time’s up.”

As he stands, rusty legs and blunt for trauma head making it hard, Hu raises an index finger, taking care to close up the yellow pad of paper and tuck it neatly beside him. “Can I leave you with a thought?”

“As long as it’s quick.”

“Re-evaluate your team dynamics, take a closer examination to the relationships you’ve formed.”

Shakes his head, not entirely aware of his homework assignment. “They’re all the same relationship, Doc, they’re all my teammates. They’re all my family.”

“Then why are you more upset about Vala’s torture, than you are of Dr. Jackson’s death?”


	4. A High Pink Blush

“How are you feeling today, Cameron?”

“Pretty shitty, Doc, how do you think I feel?” He’s thrown into the corner of the couch, slouching back, his bent leg bounces, agitated, against his bad thigh, jolting it with each movement.

He barely feels it.

“Yes, I heard about the announcement which is why I suggested moving up our—”

“Unfortunately for you, I don’t want to talk about how the IOA’s dumbass decision is making me feel.” Which is the whole rainbow of emotions—rage-fueled blind anger, cheated, hurt, abandoned, confused—basically any emotion except happy.

Not happy because humor didn’t help this situation one fucking bit.

“I thought you might find solace in a familiar, quiet environment.”

The room is anything but quiet—if he concentrates hard enough he can make out the sounds that Hu is right, are familiar to him after five weeks. The grumble of the kettle starting to boil, the drip from the loose kitchen faucet, whatever background ambiance he’s chosen today—it sounds like it’s the singing bowls again—something he didn’t existed until they had a whole conversation about them one day so he didn’t have to talk about what it was like to watch Jackson die, or how he felt when he saw Vala beaten.

“I should’ve known it was coming.” His jaw is very tight, almost aching, and he refuses to sit straight, to make eye contact, to form more than a sentence at a time because every time he thinks back to the conference room, him sitting closest to the head of the table where Landry would sit and Vala shuffled in—her hair still a frizzy, uneven mess, her arm slingless but still all chewed to hell. She plopped next to him, elbow angling in on the table to rest her head, until the pain of her shoulder snuck up on her and she jumped back, lolling in the half rotation of the chair.

Only her rotational squeaking entertained the room before she cleared her throat. “How is your lip?”

“It’s doing better, stitches came out yesterday.” He sat perfectly still while one of the new nurses plucked at the thread holding his lips together. Was left with a white, jagged line through his lip, similar to the one she has under her eye.

New skin.

When he half turns to her, his own chair squeaking, she’s coddling her arm against her chest—her casual lean hurt more than she let on. “How’s the shoulder.”

“Oh, it still bites a bit.” The grins he gave him was pleasant and a conversation ender, apparently she didn’t want to get into details.

“After my accident, the physiotherapists set up a schedule of exercises to do to increase the mobility of my legs, my neck. If you want, we can hit the workout room after this, see where you’re at physically.”

She rotates away, then swings back again, slouching down in the chair, her grin growing smaller, but more genuine. “As lovely and compelling as that offer sounds, Dr. Lam has warned me against overexerting the muscle.”

“There wouldn’t be any exerting, just stretches.”

“I find it more interesting that you’re so keen on getting me into the workout room.”

She’s right.

Why does he want her to go with him so badly?

Why does he need to be the one to help her with her injury when they have qualified medical professionals on staff?

Why does he actively seek her out, wanting to talk, but then shuffle back soundlessly into the dark edges of the hallway when he finds her sobbing over Jackson in his lab, holding his glasses and swiping away tears?

Why didn’t he comfort her?

It’s gotta have something to do with her being the only one to come back alive from the Lucien Alliance. Of him risking his own hide to pull hers out of there. Working the good cop/silent scary cop routine on the villagers with Teal’c and then commandeering a rundown cargo ship to save her ass—their asses, meant to save two. Maybe that’s why he’s trying to nurture her and protect her through this—because she spent three days getting hit and cut up and her shoulder dislocated, and he brought her out of it.

“I dunno, Teal’c’s been pretty scarce lately and I need a workout buddy.”

Ceases her rotations, both her hands pressing flat against the conference table as she leans in towards him, no smile, no tears, straight-faced with stern eyebrows. “Darling, Teal’c hasn’t been here for some time.”

“What do you mean?”

The kettle whistles over the echoing bowls, imagines dozens of them floating in a stream of water, clanging together, singing out that same ominous tune. Hu has his back turned, preparing his tea. “From what I understand, the disbandment isn’t permanent—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Shakes his head, leaning it back against the couch for support. He rubs at his bottom lip, the new skin, the scar a heavy groove under his fingertip. “It’s never good when the bosses want you to break apart.”

“Well, how much conference were you really keeping with the other members?” Hu dusts away the cushion to his chair and plants the yellow pad down the side as he sits, cupping the tea in both hands. “You weren’t really talking that much with one another.”

“I wasn’t allowed to because of the ongoing investigation.”

“The IOA told you not to speak of Dr. Jackson’s death, but all other topics were allowed.”

“Well, apparently Teal’c’s left the building.” Shifts sitting up straight because his back is starting to hurt something fierce, the pain radiating down through his thigh to his hip, and he can’t remember the last time he took the pills he’s supposed to for pain management.

“Does it upset you that Teal’c left without saying goodbye?”

“No.” Pauses and rethinks the situation, of how he’s gonna have to spend some time on the Mitchell family farm in Auburn because after everything that’s happened, he’s gonna need the time away. “Or maybe? I don’t know. I know he’s the strong, silent type, but I thought we were closer than that.”

“What about, Vala?”

He sighs, scratching at the back of his ear. “You always ask about her.”

“Asking questions is my job, Cameron.”

“Yeah but in every session, you ask about her.”

“Have you spoken with her about SG-1 disbanding?”

“We might have talked about it briefly.” Preoccupied with checking his watch and groans when he finds out that they still have almost thirty minutes left in the session. “Listen—I think I’m gonna call it today.”

“We still have—”

He stands, smoothing out the wrinkles in his air force fatigues, taking a step and his leg hitches a bit before his shifts most of his weight to his other foot. “I know, but I think I’ve been a great guy putting up with answering all the questions I can. I’ve never ducked out early before, and I just found out that my team, the people I’ve worked with for the last five years, are either getting shipped off-world, or they’re already there.”

“If you answer me one question honestly, I will conclude the session and write it off as a full completion.”

Halts at the doorway, interested in not having to repeat the session. “Depends what it is, Doc.”

“Are you glad Vala survived in lieu of Dr. Jackson?”

“I’m not glad Jackson died—”

Hu raises his hand to stop his forming outburst. “I didn’t ask that. I asked if given the choice and being able to only save one, would you have picked Vala.”

“I—”

“Don’t think, Cameron, just answer.”

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

Because—he will never admit it—but when he saw her, all black and white on the security monitor, skin all black and blue and the blue and her eyes, and her shoulder—it got him upset, physically upset enough to fight any Lucien Alliance member that stood in his way, upset enough to pin her injuries onto himself and Jackson.

Upset enough to not feel Jackson’s death until the next morning on the Odyssey because he sat in her room for more than an hour wondering if she was going to wake up, if she would ever tell him what happened because he wanted to know the guys—what they looked like, their names—wanted to bomb the whole goddamn Lucien Alliance.

Because after being told that the team was indefinitely disbanding and that he would be reassigned to lead a different team barring a clean investigation and she would be thrown into an off-world liaison for some random planet they did go to the workout room.

He held her arm with both hands, directed and rotated until she hissed in pain, and she talked to him the whole time, but he didn’t hear a word because it hard to concentrate on her voice, and her skin, and the tautness of her muscles, and the bruises flourishing from beneath the strap of her black tank top, and her slumped over in black and white.

When she asked him a question and he didn’t answer, she shoved him, and he let her. She shoved him again and with her weak, healing arm, pointed her other index finger at him, close to jamming it into his chest, her face flushing, her eyes glassy as she went off on him and he didn’t hear a damn thing.

She wound herself down, the first two strikes of tears ripped down her cheeks, and shook her head solemnly at him, then her words rang out clear as church bells. “You’re abandoning me.”

Then he didn’t respond from shock, from hearing her voice raspy from screaming and her expression completely empty of anything but pain.

“You’re abandoning me.” Arm cradled against her chest like a bird with a broken wing.

When she turned he reached out to bring her back, fingers grasping around her good arm, half turning her back, but she wrenched away.

So he did it again, with more force, with more feeling, spun her back towards him, a hand clamping down on each of her arms, then on the sides of her face, her skin slick and cold and her cheek holding the same scarred grove as his lip and he kissed her. Felt the pressure build up in his lip, not painful, just there, and she was so soft and warm and still cried as his fingers dragged across her cheek and knotted in her hair, pulling out her failed attempt at a ponytail.

Opened his mouth to deepen the kiss and her hand slithered its way between them, shoving him off, pulling apart the warmth they created together.

“This won’t help.” Her cheeks held a high pink blush and the rims of her eyes were very red, eyelashes clumped together, and her hair stayed down, finally given up.

But in flashes he saw her in black and white, unconscious and beaten, then in his arms as he roused her at the control panel, his cheek nudging against hers, letting her lean back against him as she surveyed the crystals and wires, felt each shallow breath she took against his own chest.

The minute he saw her in that room, that cell, he knew he wasn’t leaving that base without—

No.

No, it’s not that—

It’s because he—alternate him—told him to cut the green wire.

Didn’t know it would save just her, only trusted that whatever happened after would benefit him, the team, the SGC, somewhere down the road. She has to be the answer to a bigger problem they’re going to have in the future.

“You asked why I fixate on her every time we have these sessions.” Hu places his empty teacup back on the side of his desk and it’s swallowed up in the shadow of the kettle. The window is still lit up, just like they’re in some high-rise building, like there’s rain and wind and sun—and some fountain filled with fifty singing bowls—just outside the door like there’s no extenuating circumstances to these visits. “I fixate on her because you do.” 

“I talk about her because she’s my friend—”

“She’s more than that.” The pad isn’t even out, and that’s what makes this scary, the psychoanalyzing, the laying out his faults for unprofessional purposes. “She’s an object of desire to you because she allows you to live out your fantasy of being a white knight.”

“She’s a friend and a teammate—”

“She allows you to fixate on her rescue, her saving, instead of Dr. Jackson’s death and in that way you didn’t fail. You didn’t allow—”

“I didn’t ‘allow’ any of this to happen. I had to cut a wire and I cut one.”

“But not the one Dr. Jackson suggested. Not the one Vala suggested. You chose it, Cameron. You ignored the answers of two teammates, who you’ve admitted were more knowledgeable than you on the subject, and you cut the wire you wanted.”

“I cut it, because I told me to cut it.”


	5. Green-Hued Bruise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there,   
> initially I was going to write a comforting epilogue, which would resolve any questions left unanswered (like where did Teal'c actually go, and if Mitchell made the right choice cutting the wire), but I decided against it as I felt the comfort of the final chapter went against the tone of the overall story. So instead I left it intentionally unclear so you, the reader, could decide. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

“How are you feeling today—”

“Can we just cut the shit and get into it?”

Hu hasn’t even filled the kettle with water yet, hasn’t sifted through and recovered the yellow pad full of all his problems. Hasn’t even decided on the ambient sound for today, there’s no rain or thunder or clanking bowls or chirping birds. Behind the curtains is still dark.

“You’re quite agitated today.”

“Well, I’ve had _Tears of a Clown_ stuck in my head for the last few days and it’s starting to grind down my last nerve.” Paces between the couch and the table, his trick hip feeling the raise in carpet where a crease has kicked up. “So what do you think that’s about?”

“Vala leaves tomorrow morning, does she not?” Hu keeps calmer in the wake of his misbehavior, something that annoys him more about being here.

After two weeks of rest and relaxation with his folks in Auburn, he’ll be leading an entirely different team getting shifted to a different team, so why the hell do these sessions still matter?

Doesn’t answer Hu’s question, instead stopping his march and throwing the meanest scowl he can muster the Doc’s way. He’s angry and he doesn’t understand why. Sad and he’s more aware of why but can’t really come up with a single concrete reason. Most of all he’s confused, sifting through all these emotions without being able to focus on one.

“Is that why you’re upset?”

Takes a breath in, tries to calm himself, stomping over to the couch. “I’m upset because this is useless.”

“This session or your life?”

“Okay,” snorts as he sits on the couch arm, a clear shot to the door that he could run to if he wanted. But something is keeping him here. “Ease up on the harshness, Doc.”

“Being blunt seems to be your raison d’etre, Cameron.” Hu shrugs, standing from the chair to fill his kettle with water, and returning with his cup, but not his notepad. “Your method is bottling up your emotions until you have a breakdown and become overly blunt, overly physical, which leads you to apologize for the act and cover it with humor.”

The change in attitude, the honesty, is off-putting. “Tossing around the deep cuts today?”

“We have one session left, and I thought perhaps the best method of reaching you would be to react how you react: defensively, primitively.” The earthy smell of the tea wafts into the air again, but without the background ambiance, the room seems empty, the conversation feels forced—it was always forced—but more for the need to speak to cover up the silence.

“Fine.” Throws his hands up a bit, the door still looking real good—where would he even go. He’s still got a little packing to do. He could go help her pack. Went there earlier to help her pack—or just apologize for, well, everything—and that never ended up happening. “You wanna talk about it? Let’s talk.”

“Why did you cut the green wire?”

“A few years back we met SG-1 from another universe. We bested them and before we sent their asses back through the gate, other me told me to cut the green wire when the time came.”

“And you chose to heed an alternate, probable evil, version of yourself over two teammates with expertise in that situation?”

“It was—” rubs his hand across his forehead, feeling the pressure of a headache growing there. He didn’t sleep last night—not that much—too much going on between the white streak on the treadmill, and being in a room that wasn’t his, couldn’t settle—didn’t know if he should settle. “It was too perfect to be a coincidence.”

“All right.” Hu retrieves his cup using the claw method, and sips on the tea as softly as ever, but in the silence of the room, it might as well be thunder directly overhead. He clears his throat, setting the cup back on the side of his desk. “In entertaining the idea that this alternate version of yourself only had your best intentions in mind, what did you stand to gain from this?”

“If I’m lucky, a flag on my file and being leader of SG-5 for the next five years until I retire.”

“No, Cameron. Don’t look at your life look at his.”

“Okay—”

“What did you have, that he didn’t?”

“I don’t know. I only spent a few minutes with the guy.”

“Describe him to me.”

With a blank stare he deadpans, “he’s me.”

“Cameron.” Hu warns with the same stresses on his name that his momma puts there and he wonders if the SGC hooked him up with his emergency contact file, if the Doc’s been having lazy Sunday phone calls with her.

“Okay, he was a Colonel, he was in charge of the team. His team—”

Stops talking because he knows what it is.

“His team?” Hu, pen flying over the yellow pad of paper still, glances at him over the rims of thin glasses.

“We had a few come through that were different—had different people on them.”

“Was his one of those?”

Clicks his tongue and tugs his lips to the side in a grimace. “Well, yes and no. He had all the current members of SG-1, but—”

“But?”

“Vala wasn’t with us then, it was after she got sucked into the supergate.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“They didn’t have a Vala, but they had a Daniel.”

“So your assumption is that the wire the alternate version of you cut—”

“Spaced Vala instead,” huffs it out, the words hanging on is breathe, barely audible even to him.

“That’s basing a lot on assumption, Cameron.” Hu checks his eyebrow and adjusts himself, sitting back straighter in the chair. “For example, all the circumstances to bring your team to the same Lucien Alliance quarters would have had to occur.”

“Didn’t seem that far off.”

“Are you aware that you’ve taken the incident in which a teammate of five years was killed inadvertently by your hand, and made it about her?”

“You want me to talk about what that was like?” Jumps from the arm of the couch immediately regretting the decisions as he lands less than gracefully on his stiff leg. Stiff from working out, from not working, from not taking medications he’s been taking for years now.

Paces the carpet again, well aware his fingers are twitching at his side. “I had both of them screaming to me through comms, just like when they wanted to go and investigate the ruins. An alarm went off and I had to make a choice, Jackson didn’t know enough about the mechanics, Vala might not have been aware enough to make the choice, so I did. I cut green and I got to watch Jackson burst into space, watch him expand and his skin burn and freeze. Watch him suffocate to death.”

“But you got to save the girl.”

“There is no ‘saving the girl’.” Trips on the crease in the carpet stumbling to a stop, his rant however, continues spilling from his mouth. “She was put there because of us, she took the brunt of three days of torture, she fixed the lock in the hangar, and she hasn’t stopped crying about Jackson. I can’t fix her because I broke her too good.”

He was the one who went to her last night. In a weird change of character, he’s the one who stood outside her door, knocking and knocking at one in the morning until the door hissed open and she squinted her eyes against the bright light of the hallway.

“Mitchell?”

“Hey, umm—can I come in?” He took a step forward, but instead of her body shifting out of the way, like he’d expected, one of her hands moved to hold the frame of the door, blocking him more.

“What’s this about?”

“I just need to talk to you—”

“It’s rather late.”

“Vala, please.” It must be something about the way his voice cracked, because she nodded, stepping out of the way and letting him into her room. He’d been here before—all on official business of course—but it looked more chaotic then it usually did. Knickknacks and keepsakes thrown into blue bins assigned with her ID number to be kept in storage until her return or her retirement.

Her bed is unmade, the comforter pulled off and heaped on the ground, the sheets wrinkled and lumped, and random papers spread out over the entire mess. “You still haven’t finished packing?”

She shrugged and began to collect the papers, plucked them up carefully, and made a neat pile of them between her fingers. “I’m a procrastinator.”

Sat on her bed and felt the warmth of where her body was through the mattress. Studied her room a bit more as she slipped the papers away into one of the bins. The drawers of her dresser pulled out and emptied, a withering plant in a dark corner of the room, the garbage pail filled to the brim with tissues, and a forgotten piece of paper by his foot—must have fluttered away while she was rearranging them.

Picked it up, and it was in his writing, his chicken scratch scrawled out what looked like a list—maybe a grocery list—and then the names of a few reference texts at the bottom and a reminder he had lunch with Teal’c at 11:30.

“You dropped this one.” Held out the paper to her. She recoiled at first, acted shocked, almost scared, like he was going to give her shit for keeping Jackson’s notes, but her shoulders relaxed as her hand reached out to take the page.

“I used to go into his trash and fish them out. At first I was just looking for information.” Turned her back to him as she stowed the page away along with the others. “About him, about you, about this base, anything to do with credit cards or bank statements, but then I just started collecting them.” Her voice raspy and her body tired, thick and sloppy in her movements like she waded through mud to get to him. Perched herself beside him on the edge of the bed, her hands folded and in her lap. “Now I look at them and remember each day. How he met Teal’c for lunch and brought me back a brownie because I had to go find those wretched texts in the archive.”

A wistful grin clawed its way through the pained expression she wore.

“Do you still cry as much?” Knew it was a stupid question the moment he asked it, and the way her head whipped towards him was all the answer he needed.

Expected her to go off at him because she deserved to and he deserved it, instead she held onto her composure, answered with only the slightest twinge at the corner of her lips. “Yes, you?”

“Yeah, it’s my fault he’s gone.”

They sat in silence again, and he listened to them both breathe heavy, like they’d run a marathon, like they had adrenaline pumping through them instead of being beyond exhausted. Wondered what the fuck he was actually doing there, and when he couldn’t come up with an answer, because there was no way to ever get an answer, and there was nothing he could do to help her, he decided he should leave.

But she spoke.

Soft and gentle like rain on tape—the soundtrack to most of his therapy session. “I had a daughter, you know.”

“Yeah, I think everyone kinda knows—”

“No, not Adria. I had a daughter before her.” The same wistful grin glowed on her face while he stared at her, not really understanding the importance of her words. “She had gorgeous pale green eyes and my dark hair, and she was everything, Cameron, my everything.” Her eyes darted back to her hands, back to her pajama pants and the wrinkles she plucked out of them. “I tried my very best to protect her,” her voice cracked, “even sacrificing myself for the Goa’uld to ensure her safety, but even if you get it in writing, it’s never true.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because killing someone, even indirectly, is going to stay with you forever. Being here, being on this team allowed me to focus on the now instead of then, instead of what Qetesh had made me do. Daniel made me happy despite his slings, and I loved him, just as I love you, just as I love Teal’c and Samantha.” She snuffled, blinked her eyes a few times, but tears fell anyway, streaked down her face, stained the clump of sheets between them. She inhaled deeply, and swallowed before continuing, “I’m going to that planet tomorrow morning and we both know that I will not becoming back. We both know that we will probably never see each other again. We both know the Lucien Alliance will catch up with me and that will be the end.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Because—” She turned towards him, her eyes glass half-empty and her smile puckered and trembled. “I’m tired of fighting for good when only bad things happen.”

That was what it took for him to kiss her.

To grab the sides of her face, fingers splayed over her cheeks and neck, and pull her to him. She didn’t protest, she didn’t kiss back, not until he started to realize the wetness between them—what he thought were the tears on her face—were really his own.

The sex was sex and it didn’t last long.

She fell back to the bed, and he got her off the first time with his fingers inside her. Barely had any time to wrestle up a condom from the skeleton of a bedside table drawer before he plunged in. His kisses were harsh, hard against her lips, her body. His fingers dug into her skin leaving bruises in their wake. He came breathing in the scent of her body, of the sweat against her neck and the faint smell of shampoo from the last time she showered. Fell against her, heaved with her, chests met with each pant, and felt her fingers at the back of his neck before he pulled out, rolled off her, wary of the green-hued bruises still bubbling at her shoulder.

They lay beside each other and he listened to them breathe until they synced up, and he tried to calm himself, even out his breathes so hers would as well. The humid air diffused in the room and as the sweat cooled against his skin he started to shiver.

“Do you feel better?” She gasped, her eyes trained on the ceiling, a strap of her tank top ripped and her breast threatened to topple free with her heaving.

“No.” No hesitation, no head shake, just concentrated on tracing the lines of the ceiling with her, his thumping heart calming. “Do you feel less empty?”

“No.”

“Cameron, you don’t need to save the girl or fix the girl.” Hu fixes his cup of tea, scooping the leaves from a sealed pouch into a strainer. The mossy smell, the sound of rain, of singing bowls ramming into each other, clanging in a unified dissonance. “You have a need in you to protect her, a chivalrous nature that’s skewing all the important details of what happened.”

The sound of her sighing beside him, as she sat on the side of the bed, yanking her panties up her legs, over the squall of redness—of bruises—his fingers bit into her thighs, and even then he didn’t remember how she felt, how she tasted, what noises she made.

He leaned up on his elbows, watched her pull her mussed hair into a ponytail, the condom gone and himself tucked back in his sweats.

“Do you blame me?”

And he didn’t know what he meant by it, the meanings all skewed in his head—but she seemed to understand.

“Yes.” Nodded softly and sat on the bed, her back to him. “But I don’t want to.”

Quelled the need to reach for her, for her shoulders shaking in another quiet sob, because he didn’t remember how she smelled, or if he even got her off a second time. He only remembers her in black and white.

Glanced over her shoulder at him, her cheeks white and glistening, her voice low. “Do you love me?”

“No.” No hesitation, no head shake, just an answer. “but I want to.”

Hu sits back in the chair, having retrieved his yellow writing pad and his green tea. Behind the blinds is bright and there is the sound of thunder over distant hills playing as background music to the doctor’s explanation.

“—to accept, you will be better apart.”

Silence engulfs the room, Hu gentle sipping on his tea and himself without a coffee, without a team, without gratification or an inkling other than his own far-fetched imagination, that he’s done the right thing.

“What do you want from me?”

Hu sets his cup on the edge of his desk, his writing pad all used up, with pages filled with quickly written words about his life, about the mistakes he’s made, the team he’s lost. “I want to know how you feel, Cameron. I want you to move on from this.”

Red.

Yellow.

Green.

He would do it again.

He would do it all again.

Stands from the couch, hands on his thighs to use as leverage, his hip groans, he groans, “if you’re looking for closure from me, Doc, you’re not going to get it.”

There is no closure, because if the same thing happened today, if the same three wires needed to be cut right now, he would always cut green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References 'Tear of a Clown' by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. 
> 
> Some closing thoughts for those interested in navigating the duality of this story:   
> *Is Hu working with the IOA, or does he have Mitchell's best intentions in mind?  
> *Who really died on that base? Who made it home?   
> *Who really hit Mitchell in the cafeteria?   
> *How did Vala's shoulder dislocate?   
> *Does Mitchell even care about Vala or is she a coping mechanism?   
> *Is the reason the team is splitting because of the incident, or because of something else?   
> *Was/were the death(s) Mitchell's fault?   
> *Is this what Mitchell's counterpart intended to happen?   
> *Would Mitchell not change a thing because he would always trust his own suggestions (even from another version of himself) over those of his teammate or because he's afraid he would lose Vala if he didn't cut the green wire. 
> 
> Feel free to let me know!


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